Israeli citizens to Booking.com: Stop profiteering from Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian people

December 2018

To Gillian Tans - CEO, Booking.com,

We are citizens of Israel, opposed to our government’s policies of military occupation and ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Palestinian people [1]. We write to ask that Booking.com cease from profiting from these policies, which constitute war crimes that, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Dimensions of Population Transfer, carry criminal responsibility for individuals as well as states [2].

In examining the issue of colonial settlements the UN Rapporteur highlights not only the immediate economic impacts, such as displacement and poverty as a result of theft of land, but also the dimension of altering the demographic composition of a territory, which relates directly to ethnic cleansing and the crime of genocide.

While the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel in its place already achieved a massive alteration of the demographic composition of a territory [3], Israel continues to aspire for alteration of the demographic composition, both declaratively [4] and physically [5], in occupied and colonized territories [6].

We ask Booking.com to join Airbnb in removing Israeli settlements from its website. We ask Booking.com to stop profiteering from Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian people and the colonisation of their land. We join numerous civil society groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace [7] and Human Rights Watch [8], in congratulating Airbnb for delisting settlement properties, and we urge Booking.com to follow suit.